Political Grace: The Gift of Resistance

Authored by
Wes Rehberg Ph.D.

Philosophy and theology have increasingly turned to the problem of the rising numbers of people who live in severe conditions of oppression, people who are surplus to global economic and political orders which the oppressed define as "neoliberal" and "neocolonial." This work, Political Grace: The Gift of Resistance, is part of that turning, through conversations with those who were and still are living under oppressive conditions, especially in Central America and Mexico, and through conversations with phenomenology, feminist theology, feminist jurisprudence, ethics, and liberation theology. There is an assertion that grace, and the organization of the "lifeworld" which phenomenologists discuss, act in concert to seek to empower the flourishing of humans to understand and resist the abasing conditions they confront. What frequently occurs when people living under oppressive conditions try to change their circumstances is a backlash by those who control their political, social and economic conditions. In response, the spirit of grace, as part of the human effort to flourish, aids in the resistance against the denial of this flourishing. -- Wes Rehberg